Trump Just Kept a Major Campaign Promise to Rural America

President Donald Trump announced Monday at the Utah State Capitol that he would be shrinking two national monuments in southern Utah by more than 2 million acres, keeping a campaign promise to return public lands to those who use them most.

“You know how best to take care of your land,” Trump said. “You know best how to conserve this land for generations.”

The announcement came after Trump had signed two executive orders to significantly reduce the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.

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“I’ve come to Utah to reverse federal overreach and restore the rights to this land to your citizens,” he added.

Trump called the original designation of both monuments an example of federal overreach perpetuated by “distant bureaucrats.”

“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” he said. “And guess what, they’re wrong.”

The reconfiguration will reduce the 1.35 million acre Bears Ears National Monument down to 228,784 acres, and the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to roughly 1 million acres.

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“Public lands will once again be for public use,” Trump declared.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was present alongside Trump as he spoke to the crowd in Salt Lake City.

“This is about giving rural America a voice,” Zinke said.

“There are not many presidents that do what he is about to do.” Zinke added: “The president is doing this for the right reasons to make sure that Utah has a voice.”

“When Bears Ears was designated, it was disheartening for my community,” Zinke said. “It was insulting that bureaucrats thousands of miles away didn’t believe we were capable of protecting our land.”

However, Trump’s executive orders have also faced opposition and criticism.

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Ten environmental groups from across the country reportedly filed a federal lawsuit Monday to protect the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

“The president lacks the authority under the Antiquities Act to repeal national monuments like he tried today,” the legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Steve Bloch said. “We argue that when Congress passed the Antiquities Act it delegated to the president the authority to establish national monuments, not to repeal or rescind them The president is trying to take more authority than Congress has granted him.”

Trump’s executive order is the largest reduction to national monuments since the inception of the Antiquities Act in 1906, according to The New York Times.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Bears Ears monument was established by former President Barack Obama, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument was established by former President Bill Clinton.

The Times reported in April that Trump had ordered the Interior Department to review the size of national monuments that had been created since 1996, and were larger than 100,000 acres.

“It’s time to end these abuses and return control to the people, the people of Utah, the people of all of the states, the people of the United States,” he said in April.